Mitochondrial DNA and a Young First Man and First Woman

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GOD SAID, Genesis 1:26-27:

26  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

GOD SAID, Genesis 5:1-2:

1  This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

2  Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

MAN SAID:  According to famous evolutionist Richard Leakey, “There is no single center where modern man was born.”  In other words, mankind simply began emerging from the evolutionary process in random places on the earth around 1,000,000 years ago.

Now THE RECORD.  I’m so grateful that God has preserved for us His wonderful living Word.  All of life’s questions are answered here.  All of its challengers are defeated here.  This Holy counsel, found in the majority-text Authorized King James Version, is true and righteous altogether.  These magnificent Words, written thousands of years ago, stand sure in the face of an army of incessant detractors.  Satan’s finest carnal thinkers have been paraded before the world to ridicule Holy Writ, only to be found fools and liars.  From the first page to the last, the Bible is true.

In the very first chapter, on the sixth day of creation, God created the first man and then the first woman.  They were named Adam and Eve—“Mr. and Mrs. Adam.”  Pseudo-science mocked such a concept, at least until a little over 20 years ago when new discoveries forced the skeptics to take up their tents and move to a new location.  On GodSaidManSaid are features titled “Adam and Eve” and “Young! Young! Young!,” which document the discoveries made in the field of anthropology.  These discoveries certify that the world’s population finds its root in one man and one woman.  This feature deals specifically with mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the latest research that again certifies the Word of God.  It also confirms previous research on this particular issue which began in 1987.  A pivotal issue is the calibrating of the mitochondrial clock.  Dr. Donald Chittick documents this concept clearly in his book, The Puzzle of Ancient Man.  The following paragraphs are from the GodSaidManSaid article “Young! Young! Young!” and they refer to Dr. Chittick’s book as well as to other sources:

Biochemical evidence is knocking at evolution’s door, and knocking with a vengeance.  Scientists have discovered how to trace human ancestry by studying mitochondrial DNA.  The title on the cover of a 1988 issue of Newsweek reads, “The Search for Adam and Eve.”  Scientists followed the trail of human DNA and discovered that all human life originated from just one woman, appropriately calling her Eve.  See “Adam and Eve” on this website.  This discovery fits fully with Genesis 3:20:

And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

This discovery of Eve shook Darwin’s tree to its roots, and the fact that it dated this Eve to be 200,000 years old was another slap against their evolutionary beliefs.  They had man popping up all over the place with a timed entrance at least 1,000,000 years ago.  Their truth has been debunked again.

A 1995 announcement by the biochemical industry shocked the evolutionary-faithful once again.  This was what researchers believed to be the discovery of the father of all mankind.  The headline in The Oregonian, November 23, 1995 reads, “Researchers Dig Up Evidence of ‘Adam,’ Father of All Men.”  The following is an excerpt from that article:

Scientists think they have found strong evidence of an ancestral “Adam” about 188,000 years ago to go with the previously discovered “Eve.”  The scientists used certain male-specific segments of the Y chromosome, the chromosome passed from father to son, to trace the common ancestor of every man now on Earth to that period.  [End of quote]

(Again, click onto “Adam and Eve” on this website.)

Concerning the methodology used to date the DNA chain to mother Eve, Chittick explains:

How was this date of 200,000 years obtained?  Over time, mutations occur in the DNA of humans (and other animals).  How many mutations have occurred since Eve?  How fast do mutations occur?  In other words, what is the rate at which the mitochondrial DNA clock runs?  If the number of mutations since Eve were known, and if the mutation rate were also known, then one could calculate how long ago mitochondrial Eve lived.

Because of their evolutionist world-view, and their belief that humans had been here for a million years or more, those who investigated the mitochondrial DNA attempted to calibrate the clock in accord with their belief system.  Only by speculating or hypothesizing about the past could a clock rate be obtained because no actual rates for the mitochondrial clock had been observed.  [End of quote]

Chittick continues his dissertation and goes on to quote Ann Gibbons as she wrote in the January 2, 1998 issue of Science.  The title of the Gibbons article is, “Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock.”  Chittick writes:

What has been the result of further investigation since the 1988 and 1995 results were published?  An interesting subsequent development has been calibration of the mitochondrial clock by using actually observed data rather than by using speculations from evolutionism.  The result has shown that the clock ticks very much faster than expected.  [End of quote]

Gibbons reports:

Mitochondrial DNA appears to mutate much faster than expected, prompting new DNA forensics procedures and raising troubling questions about the dating of evolutionary events.  In 1991, Russians exhumed a Siberian grave containing nine skeletons thought to be the remains of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and his family and retinue, who were shot by firing squad in 1918.  But two bodies were missing, so no one could be absolutely certain of the identity of the remains.  And DNA testing done in 1992—expected to settle the issue quickly—instead raised a new mystery.

The mystery concerned dates relating to the clock rate.  It appears that mutations occur at a much more rapid rate than had been imagined.  Although there seems to be considerable debate about the cause of the faster rate, the faster rate has been verified by independent investigations.

Again, Gibbons says:

Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate.  For example, researchers have calculated that “mitochondrial Eve”—the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living people—lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa.  Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6,000 years old.  [End of quote]

The headline in the article published in the May 2008 issue of Acts & Facts reads, “Mitochondrial DNA and a Recent Human Origin.”  The bulk of the article follows:

A team of scientists that includes Dr. Daniel Criswell of ICR has recently completed a study of mitochondrial DNA and will be presenting its work at this summer’s International Conference on Creationism.  A mitochondrion is a cellular power plant that generates most of the chemical energy the cell needs to support its functions.  Although most of a cell’s DNA is contained in the nucleus, the mitochondrion has its own small DNA molecule and this DNA is passed down from mother to child.  The study has revealed an unexpected lack of diversity within worldwide human mitochondrial lineages, despite high mutation rates, and this supports the idea that humanity is only a few thousand years old.

Mitochondrial DNA has been used to develop several models of human origins.  The Recent African Origins hypothesis (RAO) is currently the most popular model for human evolution.  Although the RAO model has a number of significant technical problems and makes some assumptions that conflict with a biblical perspective, it contains several interesting tenets: 1) there was a single dispersal of mankind with three main mitochondrial lineages interspersed within clans; 2) the dispersion was centered in the Middle East in the recent past; 3) the dispersion was essentially tribal in nature, with small groups pushing deeply into previously uninhabited territory; and 4) genetic evidence indicates that male lineages are much more geographically specific than female lineages, with female migration rates up to eight times greater than males.  This latter tenet is an expression of the Babel account in Genesis, where the initial, well-mixed population split up and migrated according to paternal lineage.  The biblical model fits very well with data collected in these evolutionary studies. 

The ICR team began an exploration of changes in mitochondrial DNA by collecting and culling publicly-available human DNA records to create a set of 827 high-quality sequences.  From this, they constructed a consensus sequence called Eve 1.0.  They continued their analysis by modeling human mitochondrial genetic history using Mendel’s Accountant, a numerical program developed at ICR that can be used to mimic the accumulation of mutations in a population over time.

After analyzing the differences found among the sequences in their dataset, they discovered that more than 83 percent of the mitochondrial genome had not changed in all of human history, and in over 99 percent of the locations where a change has occurred, only a small minority of people carried that specific change.  In other words, most changes that have occurred are minor and rare.  On average, human mitochondrial DNA differs from the original Eve consensus sequence by only 21.6 nucleotides (a nucleotide is a “letter” in the DNA alphabet).  This is a small number when one considers that there are more than 16,500 nucleotide letters in the human mitochondrial genome.

The authors claim, therefore, that the consensus sequence, Eve 1.0, is nearly identical to the original mitochondrial sequence—that of Eve, the first woman and the mother of every person who has ever lived.  And because the mitochondrial genome is subject to high mutation rates, the lack of significant worldwide variation is evidence for a young mitochondrial genome.  [End of quote]

Another proof of the beautiful accuracy of the Word of God is that Noah, from which all of the new world’s population streams, had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  By them, the clans of the earth were populated.  The first tenet of the Recent African Origins hypothesis reads: “1) there was a single dispersal of mankind with three main mitochondrial lineages interspersed within clans;” God’s Word is true and righteous altogether.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:26-27:

26  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

GOD SAID, Genesis 5:1-2:

1  This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

2  Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

MAN SAID:  According to famous evolutionist Richard Leakey, “There is no single center where modern man was born.”  In other words, mankind simply began emerging from the evolutionary process in random places on the earth around 1,000,000 years ago.

Now you have THE RECORD.

References:

Authorized King James Version